Monday, January 25, 2016

Gordon Duff -- Iran: The Double Double Game

Was a secret deal cut between
the government of Iran and American extremists in the Republican Party and
Pentagon over the recent capture by “accident” of not one but three oddly lost
American high technology patrol vessels sailing in the most critical regions of
the Persian Gulf?

We’re going to look at this
and see if a historical precedent can guide us toward understanding what really
happened here and what we can expect in the near future.

A few days ago, the government
of Iran released American sailors who had been detained when their patrol boats
encroached on Iranian waters off a tiny atoll in the Persian Gulf. A photo of
American, humiliated, on their knees, was flashed around the world.

This event was carefully timed
to coincide with President Obama’s last State of the Union Address and was very
embarrassing and damaging to the Obama presidency and the Democratic Party.

The Republicans were bolstered
and GOP (Republican) congressional leader Senator John McCain, famous for his
singing rendition of “Bomb-bomb-bomb..bomb-bomb Iran” demanded “blood,” Iranian
and Democratic blood.

Pentagon watchers were very
suspicious. The islands held by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard were seized from
the UAE, the Tunbs and Abu Musa along with tiny specs like the one the American
sailors “accidentally” trespassed upon.

However, a cursory examination
of the boats used by the Americans reveal highly sophisticated navigation
equipment that makes it virtually impossible for such a boat, much less three
boats, guided by secure satellite, to go anywhere they aren’t supposed to.
Simply put, navies navigate, it’s what they do, and the idea of the US Navy
getting lost in the Persian Gulf “by accident” is insane.

If this was no accident, what
was it and why did it happen when it did and who benefitted?

To understand better, we go
back in time. The year is 1979, Jimmie Carter is the American president and
Iran had seized 52 American hostages the year before and had negotiated with
the US for their release. However, in October 1980, only a month before the
presidential election, Vice Presidential candidate and former CIA Director,
George H. W. Bush, flew to Paris and met with Iranian negotiators.

The deal he cut with Iran was
to have them not release the Americans before the election as planned, assuring
that Ronald Reagan, an American actor with few qualifications, would assume the
presidency and George H.W. Bush with enormous qualifications, would be the real
president.

Iran was to get missiles, lots
of weapons, all shipped through Israeli and Saudi arms dealers with huge profits
lining the pockets of those around Bush. Eventually, 47 Reagan officials would
face prison for this outrage, the secret deal with Iran, the rigged election
and the years of arms and narcotics smuggling that were to follow.

For President Reagan, a few
days after the election, he picked up a bullet, fired into him by the “lone
gunman” son of a Bush family friend from the oil business.

Let’s take a look at one of
the fallouts of Iran’s deal with Reagan, how Reagan and, in reality, George
H.W. Bush, stabbed Iran in the back as payment for Iran’s aid in getting
Reagan, or was it really Bush, into the White House. From Foreign Policy,
August 2013:

“In contrast to today’s
wrenching debate over whether the United States should intervene to stop
alleged chemical weapons attacks by the Syrian government, the United States
applied a cold calculus three decades ago to Hussein’s widespread use of
chemical weapons against his enemies and his own people. The Reagan
administration decided that it was better to let the attacks continue if they
might turn the tide of the war. And even if they were discovered, the CIA
wagered that international outrage and condemnation would be muted.

In the documents, the CIA said
that Iran might not discover persuasive evidence of the weapons’ use — even
though the agency possessed it.

It has been previously
reported that the United States provided tactical intelligence to Iraq at the
same time that officials suspected Hussein would use chemical weapons. But the
CIA documents, which sat almost entirely unnoticed in a trove of declassified
material at the National Archives in College Park, Md., combined with exclusive
interviews with former intelligence officials, reveal new details about the
depth of the United States’ knowledge of how and when Iraq employed the deadly
agents. They show that senior U.S. officials were being regularly informed
about the scale of the nerve gas attacks. They are tantamount to an official
American admission of complicity in some of the most gruesome chemical weapons
attacks ever launched.

Top CIA officials, including
the Director of Central Intelligence William J. Casey, a close friend of
President Ronald Reagan, were told about the location of Iraqi chemical weapons
assembly plants; that Iraq was desperately trying to make enough mustard agent
to keep up with frontline demand from its forces; that Iraq was about to buy
equipment from Italy to help speed up production of chemical-packed artillery
rounds and bombs; and that Iraq could also use nerve agents on Iranian troops
and possibly civilians.”

Moving the clock forward to
2005, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, not his son “Rand,” read a
Wikileaks State Department cable into the congressional record that revealed
that the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 was done upon authorization by then
President George H.W. Bush.

For more historical context,
consider this plan and we will explain more of it in a minute, was interfered
with by the 8 year Clinton presidency. However, there were efforts to remove
Clinton from office through impeachment, perhaps now we will know why.

Some wonder why Bush(43) and
his cohorts led by Britain’s Tony Blair, would violate nearly every imaginable
international law in order to take over Iraq. Statements made by General Wesley
Clark who outlines how he learned of the Bush policy to seize the entire
region, beginning with Iraq and then a quick war wiping out Iran, give needed
context.

So, it all begins with
American prisoners, in the heady times of 1979, the Grand Ayatollah
mysteriously flown from Paris to Tehran, almost like Lenin’s closed boxcar ride
from Switzerland to St. Petersburg some decades before, all perhaps due to some
invisible hand it would seem.

Today we have three American
crew, delivered onto Iran to embarrass an American president who sponsored a
treaty with Iran.

We have an America enraged seeing its military
humiliated, no questions asked as to why the impossible would happen “thrice,”
not a word about it. But what we do have is America’s history of playing Iran,
knowing how much Iran loves to play to the local audience and how easily Iran
may forget the past as so many others do as well. Study of religion and study
of history seldom go together very well.

Did Iran know that Georg H.W.
Bush, through a family business, made millions supplying poison gas to Saddam?
When they cut the deal for the Hawk and TOW missiles to be supplied by Israel
and Ollie North, did they know America was going to try to crush them using the
WMD’s and Saddam’s army?

Did they know America would
out Saddam, not for his WMD’s supplied to him by the Bush family, but for his
failure to bring down Iran. That was his sin.

Now history may be repeating
itself again, an eight year interval like with Clinton, eight years of Obama
with no military threat against Iran whatsoever. For eight years, every attempt
was made to oust Obama, threats of military coup, assassination, endless
impeachment threats and even a threat of exposing his Kenyan birth, something
believed by only the least discerning.

Is history repeating itself,
was Iran offered another deal that will backfire, leading to Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush
or some other half-baked bellicose maniac who has dream of conquering the
Persian Empire in its latest incarnation?

If the odds of three American
patrol boats getting lost in the Persian Gulf and captured by Iranian
Revolutionary Guards is as odds makers would put it, about 50 billion to 1,
then we may well have a “January Surprise” underway.

Can Iran look forward to,
should we be right, of being betrayed? What do you think?

Gordon Duff is a Marine combat
veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for
decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a
senior editor and chairman of the board of Veterans Today, especially for the online
magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

assange

At midday on Friday 5 February, 2016 Julian Assange, John Jones QC, Melinda Taylor, Jennifer Robinson and Baltasar Garzon will be speaking at a press conference at the Frontline Club on the decision made by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on the Assange case.